Mark Dugan, Owner of PFC Ltd.
Let this be a lesson to all wise guy soccer fans out there: when you’re buying up your beloved club’s former names, make sure the current horde of angry creditors are well and truly abreast of the name change.
If you don’t, you’ll likely end up in the same boat as Portsmouth fan and businessman (the two are mutually exclusive) Mark Dugan, who snapped up his team’s old trading name for a small fee, only to find himself inundated with mail from lawyers, creditors, courts and banking officials ever since.
The karma of even tenuously connecting yourself to that club is just so royally screwed up, and Dugan’s now in bad shape much like Portsmouth. Could have seen that coming, I suppose.
“The whole thing is incredibly complicated and stupid. My intentions were only ever to have a bit of paper, have a plaque outside my house and say: ‘I own that.’ It was a bit of fun that’s led to a lot more,” said Dugan, a Pompey fan since the age of 3. Dugan bought PFC Ltd now that the club trade officially as Portsmouth City Football Club, though the problems that beset the club at the end of Alexandre Gaydamak’s ownership — not to mention the disastrous fortnight with Sulaiman Al-Fahim at the helm — are still being directed at the old trading name.
So just how bad is it? Not only do bills and court papers arrive weekly, including tax demands and invoices from unpaid advertisers, but the association with PFC Ltd has wrecked Dugan’s personal credit rating.
And let’s not forget the impact on his poor wife, Donna: “People just don’t want to listen to you. I’m getting all these court orders saying I’ve got to go to court for this, I’ve got to go to court that. Since September, Donna has religiously been phoning various courts, writing to companies to stipulate they’ve got the wrong football club. It’s not exactly helping my credit rating either. My status has evaporated. And we’re still getting the mail.”
Next time, maybe he’ll just buy stocks in Apple like the rest of us.
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